Patching Up Blood Vessels

March 24, 1986|By Scripps-Howard News Service.

A medical procedure that patches tiny but troublesome holes in blood vessels has been developed by physicians at New York University Medical Center.

Using a micro-thin hollow tube (catheter) and advanced X-ray pictures, an NYU medical team is plugging holes in arteries and veins with a medical-grade glue. The technique is particularly beneficial for people with blood vessel malformations in the brain who might suffer strokes, loss of memory or uncontrolled hemorrhaging.

The catheter is threaded into a blood vessel, then, with the assistance of X-rays, directed to the trouble spot. The medical glue is then pulsed to the blood vessel`s hole.

The procedure also is being used to block blood flow to cancers that need nutrients to grow and spread. NYU`s Dr. Alejandro Berenstein says there is a chance the glue patches may make it possible to eradicate cancers without surgery.

ARGON LASER

Physicians are eradicating intestinal bleeding with a long, thin tube tipped with an argon laser. Developed by a team of physicians at San Francisco General Hospital headed by Dr. John Cello, this innovation is helping elderly people who have abnormally swollen blood vessels in the colon, a condition that causes chronic bleeding and anemia.

Using a colonoscope (the device used on President Reagan last year)

equipped with a laser, the physicians congeal the blood vessels to halt their bleeding. The treatment`s only alternative is surgery that removes a segment of intestine.